A child’s recollection of the Warsaw Uprising
Rat King
by Andrew Olas
On the first of August, 1944, I was eight years old. It was during the World War
II. I lived in German-occupied Warsaw, till 1939 Poland’s capital. It was a sunny
afternoon. Crouching, I played in a puddle left by a brief rain. I heard a sound not
unlike that of nails being hammered and got up. I saw an elegant man fire his rifle. The
end of the barrel was odd looking, like a funnel, and from it, flames shot out. He stood
next to the neighboring house fence, slender and tall. He wore khaki plus fours, and on
his arm, his right one I think, was a white and red armband. I didn’t have a chance to
see anything more, for right there my mother ran up and took me into the cellar of the
condominium in which we lived. In the basement stood primitive benches saved by the
janitor from the siege of Warsaw at the beginning of the war in 1939, upon which our
neighbors already sat. They were saying that the Uprising was beginning, that Warsaw
would be freed by the resistance fighters, that the Germans would flee, and that then
the Bolsheviks would come, bringing the Red Army.
About the Red Army I had heard half a year earlier, in the winter, while I was
playing with my lead soldiers. Andy, who was two years older, told me then, that it
was thus called because all the soldiers wore red uniforms. I didn’t believe him: the
lead soldiers I had wore green uniforms and brown boots. The SS men in nearby
barracks wore black. Soldiers in red had to also have red boots, and no respecting
soldier would wear such boots. Therefore, Andy was trying to trick me. When I told
him so, he pinched my nose painfully. But now, adults were talking of the Red Army.
They said that when it came, “what’s yours will be mine.” What’s more, they reasoned
that the Red Army marched without shoes. This solved my problem. In red uniforms,
but barefoot - that was believable.
My mother was very upset: she murmured to herself under her breath. At that
time, this wasn’t common for her. I heard, “It’s crazy, they are stupid; they’ll destroy
the city, everyone will die...”
I wasn’t sure just what was “stupid,”but I didn’t feel it safe to ask. I had
imprinted in my memory the vision of the tall man, and I was sure I’d never forget him.
I knew that every shot from his rifle was purposeful, and I wanted to go see him
triumphant, but with my mother I wasn’t going to have that chance. She was in a bad
mood, and one could easily get it.
I never saw that elegant man again. The next day, another man, also a resistance
fighter, came to the basement, wearing the tell-tale white-red band on his arm. He was
shorter, and not as stately. He brought two carrots per each child and told us that
Warsaw was almost free, and that walking on the streets was unsafe, for the time being.
He said that because of this, we should dig a passage from our basement to the
basement of our neighbors. I thought this was a great idea.
A day or two later, my mother decided that since she felt there was less shooting,
we could move back into our house, but only into the kitchen, since it was hidden from
view. Once, when we were sitting in the kitchen, an old friend, Romek Hartman, came
by, and it turned out that he, too, was a resistance fighter. He wore a thick, wide belt,
and pinned to that belt was a grenade. My mother was very puzzled by the fact that
Romek was a resistance fighter, because he was barely three years older than my elder
brother Maciek, and he was only twelve. I asked him if he had a revolver, because I
wanted him to show it to me, but he told me that the only way to get a gun was off a
dead enemy. He added that in a matter of days he was to get a second grenade, but
that he couldn’t let me hold the one he had, because regulations forbid it. My mother
got upset again. At that point, it was very easy to upset my mother, so it was
worthwhile to watch out.
Now I knew what the elegant man had been doing the first day of the uprising.
Not more than 50 meters from our home there were SS barracks. The elegant man and
other resistance fighters were trying to overrun the barracks. The barracks were not
captured, and many of the fighters were killed. I could not imagine that the man had
died.
Those barracks had interested me long before. I had seen the SS men, (we never
called them soldiers), while they were practicing throwing grenades in front of the
building. The entrance to the barracks was blocked off by a crossbar. A guard sat in a
booth painted with black and white chevrons. I avoided walking on the sidewalk in
front of the barracks; I was afraid of the SS men on the streets as well. However, shortly
before the uprising, curiosity had become stronger than fear. In each corner of the
barracks there had been bunkers being built. I had picked the corner farthest from the
gate, and for hours I had watched the masons. The constructing of a bunker is easy, as
long as the building has a basement. One moves the bricks in the corner of the building
- one meter up and one meter over from each edge. A new, extended corner is built,
under which there is room for the soldiers to stand while they shoot from the slits cut in
the sides of the fortification. This was the type of bunkers built for the SS men. After
the masons had finished, I no longer went near the barracks - I was afraid that SS men
were watching me from the bunkers.
At some time during the uprising, we moved permanently into the basement, or
until the Germans fled, at any rate. It seemed to me that all the residents of our
building had moved into the cellar - at least all of our acquaintance’s children were
down there. My brother, mother and I had a place in the middle of the basement’s
hallway. Sitting on our cot, I could see the large gas pipe coming out of a hole in the
wall on my left, going along the basement’s ceiling, and entering the wall through
another hole on my right. Almost every evening, a giant gray rat would come out of
the hole on the left, slink along the entire length of pipe and disappear in the hole on the
right. The way he moved was very stern and determined. The rat quickly became a big
attraction for us, one for which we waited every evening. Moreover, the rat was a
challenge: we wanted to stop him. For this, Jacek Patycki thought to set soldiers in the
rat’s way. We started with a lone infantryman in a green uniform and brown boots.
The rat didn’t even notice. Without breaking stride, he knocked our soldier to the
ground and marched onward.
Every day in the evening a Mass was held. The manager’s office, which was on
the first floor, only a few feet from the basement entrance, served as the chapel. We
sang pious hymns, mostly sad ones. Evenings were therefore full: first the rat, and then
the sermon. Occasionally, though, the rat would be late, and we’d have to go to mass
without seeing him.
One day the SS men herded us onto a neighboring courtyard, where, already, on
the dead grass, the people from the building between us and the barracks sat. From a
speaker hung on a pole boomed Hitler’s orders, in German, and after that some man
spoke Polish with an odd accent. The edict stated that Warsaw was to be destroyed, so
that not one stone remained on top of another. During the speech the neighboring
apartment house, the one between us and the barracks, started to burn. People started
to cry and shout. My mother said that soon they would ignite our home. Mr. Grusza
said no, because the Germans had forced us out without anything, while the neighbors
had been allowed to gather up their things and take all that they could carry into the
courtyard. He was sure they would not burn our house. He was right, and in a little
while we were allowed to return to our home.
The rat still won over our army. Even three officers could not overcome him.
One became missing in action during a battle - he fell from the pipe into the hole in the
wall. A few days later a second soldier was killed in a skirmish - his base stand broke
off.
The adults said that there would be starvation, and continuously spoke only of
food and sustenance. One day Mr. Winter came upon the idea to gather the tomatoes
in the main courtyard, which had been planted before the uprising. The problem with
this was that the courtyard was within range of SS fire from the barracks. Mr. Grusza
said that even Germans would not fire on children. I don’t know why it turned out to
be me, but in any case Mr. Winter gave me a white flag and told me to go gather
tomatoes on that little plot of land. I didn’t argue then, but as I readied to go out, I
began to be afraid. Some said it was best that I crawl, others that I should go out
waving the white flag. I don’t remember what was decided, but it didn’t really matter,
because I got about three steps out the door and immediately escaped back inside. I
told Mr. Winter that there were no tomatoes there anymore. Mr. Winter looked at me,
and then at the plot, and said,
“You’re right, there really aren’t any.”
To this Mrs. Niczman cried, “What are you talking about? It is completely red
over there with tomatoes!”
Mr. Winter repeated, “There are no tomatoes on that plot,”louder this time.
Mrs. Niczman backed off quickly, saying, “You’re right, there aren’t any.”
I was surprised that the adults agreed with me so readily.
The rat continued winning the war. Our flank of grenadiers was decimated. The
commanding officer was crushed after falling from the pipe under the heel of one of the
adults.
The basement was lighted by carbide lamps. Before the uprising, the Germans
had turned on the electricity for a few hours a day. Now the electric lighting had
stopped completely, ever since the beginning of the uprising. Normally, for thrift, only
one lamp was burning, flickering and hissing, and the height of the fire was dependent
on the current production of gas. That night two lamps were burning, and, also, Mr.
Winter had put in more carbide than normally, so they would light the basement
longer. The reason for this was Mr. Zurman, who having recently sneaked over to our
building from the downtown district of Warsaw, had tidings from that other part of
city to tell, and everyone wanted to hear everything without interruption. The streets
of that area were covered with barricades, so as to hinder the attacks of German tanks.
The barricades consisted of overturned trams, cars, pieces of walls, street curbs, bricks,
and even furniture. I couldn’t imagine knocking over a tram, but I was sure the
resistance fighters knew how to do it.
A barricade: exactly what we needed to beat the rat. If our army was behind a
barricade, the rat would have no chance whatsoever. My attention got divided: with
one ear hearing Jacek telling me that for the rat barricade he would give me his wooden
toy tram, with the other ear listening to Mr. Zurman saying that German bombs went
right through the roofs and floors of buildings and exploded in the basement. At that
very moment a carbide lamp on my left side exploded. In an enclosed space like that
basement an actually small explosion gave the impression of a huge detonation. The
top half of the lamp had leaped up into the air, turned upside-down and imbedded
itself in the ceiling so that it looked like a duck’s bill pecking through to the basement.
Then things started happening fast and seemingly simultaneously. Mrs. Dobiecka,
pointing with her right hand at the duck’s bill, shrieked,
“A bomb, ahhhhhh!”
At the same time her left hand tried to plug both her ears in preparation for the
bomb’s explosion. Mr. Zurman straightened up and commanded,
“Don’t panic, just everyone get down!”
With his head held high and his mind concentrated, Mr. Zurman gave the
impression that he could control every situation. Mrs. Smolinska didn’t notice this
impression, because she had covered her head with a blanket that before now had
always laid in her lap. From under the blanket a muffled,
“Hail Mary, full of grace...”could be heard.
The shadow of Mr. Zurman on the basement wall told me, “Trust and obey your
leader.”
I yelled, “Yes Sir!”and dropped to the floor, never taking my eyes of the bomb.
Piotrek said,
“Sir! Sir! I’m not allowed to drop to the floor in these clothes!”
Jacek, still holding the wooden tram in his hand, started to make his way toward
the lamp saying,
“I have to see the bomb!”
By chance, Mr. Kowal, who had, on Mr. Zurman’s word dived beneath a bunk,
was in his path. Jacek tripped over Mr. Kowal outstretched leg, and dropped the
wooden tram. The tram arched through the air and landed in the small of Mrs.
Smolinska’s back. Mrs. Smolinska threw the blanket back and stood up screamed,
“I’m hurt! The shrapnel got me!”
Mr. Zurman shouted,
“Medics! The injured must go to the infirmary!”
“Sir, we don’t have an infirmary,”I volunteered.
Mr. Kowal rose from under the bunk and, shaking off the dust, said coldly,
“Mr. Zurman, not only is there no infirmary, there is also no bomb. Perhaps
you’re hallucinating.”
Mrs. Smolinska, rubbing her offended back, glared at Mr. Zurman and said,
“This place is crawling with subversives waiting for a chance to hit someone in
the back.” After a moments thought, she added, “Some of them are easy to spot: they
are always instigating panic.”
From then on the kids thought carbide lamps were better than electricity any
way.
The next day we built an anti-rat barricade. The main body of Jacek’s tram
construed the center of the barricade, while the undercarriage and the wheels blocked
the rest of the pipe. The rat came up to the barricade, climbed up onto it, and found
only the ceiling. Without hurrying, he turned around, climbed down, and returned to
the hole from which he had appeared. We had won.
The next morning we saw that the barricade was destroyed. The rat had
returned during the night and chewed through the tram’s side by widening its
windows.
* * *
In Mokotow the uprising ended earlier than in the downtown district, which was
still held at that time by the Polish fighters. The Germans came in the evening and said
that they knew that there were resistance fighters hiding among us and that they were
to immediately surrender. No one spoke up. The Germans forbid us to leave the
basement, and throughout the entire night we were shut up in there. In the morning
they led us out onto Madalinski Street. On the opposite side of the street stood
commandeered horse carriages filled with items stolen by the Germans.
They led us down Madalinski Street to Independence Avenue. The street was
burning, fire billowing from the windows of houses along the sides. For a second I
thought that I heard someone playing the xylophone. It was window panes dropping
from burning frames onto the cobbles below. At one moment my mother said that our
house too was already burning.
At the defunct Polish Airplane factory in the Okecie district the Germans said
through megaphones that nothing would happen to us. Later they told us we were to
give up all valuables - watches, jewelry, and money - to help fund the war effort of the
German Third Reich. Those who did not cooperate would be punished. That was how
my mother lost her watch. We spent the night on the concrete floor of the factory. I
was scared and hungry. This feeling stayed with me during the next long months of
wandering in the midst of German-Russian battles.
* * *
We returned to Warsaw in April 1945. The front half of our building was charred, but
our apartment was spared. We, kids, had a lot of places to play because half of the
surrounding buildings were either burned or in ruins. We had all the toys we needed:
from the wrecked armor on Wisniowa Street to dud mortar shells to different types of
explosive powders and cartridges.
They were exhuming a body very near the fence where I had seen the slim,
elegant man the first day of the uprising. Two men were digging up the corpse while a
woman with a Polish Red Cross armband was checking over some papers. Nearby, a
horse carriage was waiting to transport the body to the cemetery. The woman from the
Red Cross was saying,
“Listen, papers are most important. We have many people about which families
are still asking. Please be careful.”
I decided that the Red Cross woman wouldn’t be interested in the bomb shelter
the Germans had built near our home. The shelter, which was dug into the earth so that
from the outside looked only like a small mound, was a place where we children often
played. It had two entrances and was so low-ceiling that one couldn’t stand up straight.
When my mother had brought us back to Warsaw in April 1945, the entrances had been
covered with dirt. The unearthing of the entrances took us about two months, mainly
because in the beginning my brother and I were the only children in the house. Later
Bulek returned, and also Jacek and Piotrek. The inside of the shelter stunk; it was
mildewed and dirty. When we found a human skull, we stayed away for a week. But it
turned out the shelter was an excellent hiding place for hide-and-seek, and we later
moved the skull into a blind corner of the shelter so as it wouldn’t bother us. A little
while later we found a second skull and moved it to the same place. It was against our
rules to hide near the skulls. The skull with fewer teeth we named a German, and the
other one we dubbed a Pole.
I went to school on Narbutta Street. I had nightmares; the worst one was where I
was being chased by SS men and I had to escape by roof hopping. Most of the time I
fell, but occasionally I was caught. At school I was a favorite of our teacher, Mrs.
Siwczynska. This helped me when I accidentally lit my bench on fire while playing
with artillery powder during a Polish lesson. The janitor, Mr. Grzelak, put out the fire
with a few of pails of water. It so happened that one bucket accidentally hit me. What
was worse, the entire carry-with-me portion of my arsenal was confiscated. Most
painful was the loss of two small rocket cartridges and a large buckshot cartridge. Wet
and robbed, I was sent to the principal’s office, where, in the presence of Mrs.
Siwczynska, he told me there was no room in his school for bandits like me and that I
was expelled. Mrs. Siwczynska told me to go into the anteroom and wait. Through the
slightly ajar door I heard the principle shout fearfully at my teacher when she
mentioned that my father had been murdered at Katyn by the Communists.
“Madam, for such talk one can go to jail! I didn’t hear you say that!”
“Mr. Principal, the child is underfed and neglected. Only God knows the trauma
he underwent during the uprising. We must nurture him, not expel him!”
I didn’t consider myself neglected. Starved I wasn’t either; a number of times
during the war I had seen sausage, and at least twice I had actually tasted it. Besides
this, I was rich: only a few days before I had found among some rumble a disassembled
Parabellum handgun. It was worth at least a hundred cartridges or even two grenades.
Jacek and Piotrek’s mother, Mrs. Patycka, was the head of the Syrena theater’s
literary department, so she knew a lot of actors. Later on, thanks to her, I got to be
backstage number of times. My first theatrical experience was also because of her. The
play was The Nutcracker. I was awed. I had never before seen such rich and vivid
colors, actions, and sounds. It was a special performance for children, and the actors
involved the audience by asking questions and occasionally asking our advice. When
the Rat King first came on stage, one of the actors asked us:
“Do you like him?”
The answer was an unanimous “noooo!” Surprisingly, even to myself, I shouted
“yes!” Even when all the rest of the audience had quieted, I was still shouting, “Yes! I
like the Rat King!” I didn’t know what the actor expected when he invited me up to the
stage and asked me why I felt so. I answered, crying,
“The rat was the bravest! He was braver than the fighters!”
And then I remembered what had happened during the uprising. The SS men
had come one afternoon. I was near the entrance when they stormed the basement.
First there was the terrifying order,
“Hände hoch!”
Two black silhouettes with the blinding white opening of the door behind them,
loaded with weapons. One was shouting, “Weg!” He set himself in the corner of the
basement, pushing Mr. Grusze out of the way, and stood there, prodding the room with
the barrel of his sub-machine gun. The other one was howling, “Schnell!”and was
herding Mr. Grusza and someone else, a short man, whom I didn’t know, up the stairs,
kicking and pushing them. I knew that one of them would kill me at any moment. I
didn’t try to escape, instead I started screaming with all my might. When Mr. Grusza
and the short man were already at the exit from the basement, the SS man with the
submachine gun came out of his corner and went towards the stairs. In the sudden
silence Mrs. Pojawska said,
“Mrs. Olas, will you calm your child, or they will shoot all of us.”
The SS man, already at the bottom of the stairs, turned in her direction, the barrel
of his gun scanning the room so that at one point it was pointing directly at me. My
screams changed into howls; no one in the room moved. The SS man left. I heard two
series of shots. In the basement there was silence. Then Mrs. Grusza started to scream,
“Please! Give me back my husband!”
The corpses lay for several days in the courtyard, by the entrance to the
basement. Then we learned that the Germans had finally allowed the interring of the
dead, and a few men dug a grave in the courtyard’s lawn. Mr. Kowal, returning from
the courtyard, said,
“If this uprising doesn’t end soon, then they will have us all killed.”
* * *
Luckily for the unfortunate actor, Mrs. Patycka was backstage. After I had
started crying hard and stomping around repeating that the rat was brave, the actor
didn’t know how to get me off the stage. Mrs. Patycka simply came out from behind
the curtains and said “Come here,”and took me home. My mother told me to get
something to eat and go to bed. I fell asleep quickly, but after a little while talking
woke me up. My mother was just then scolding Mr. Kowal.
“Mr. Kowal, you are drunk, and I hate drunks. Why don’t you go home.”
“Mrs. Olas, I went home, but my wife wasn’t home. I immediately knew that she
must be with you. And anyway, I only drank because I met Mr. Smolinski. Remember
him? He was in the basement next door during the uprising. And you know what?
This world is so stupid. Now those SOB communists are saying exactly what we’ve
been saying all along, that the whole uprising was just one big blunder.“
That night I dreamed of the uprising. The Rat King, wearing a royal purple cape,
sat on a throne in the middle of our basement. On the left of the King sat Mr. Grusza,
and on the right the short man whose name I didn’t know. The herald, also standing on
the right side of the throne, was reading from a huge parchment:
“Let it be known to all, that all past blunders invalidated.”
In the crowd, I recognized my mother and Mr. Kowal with his wife. In the back,
I saw groups of people, under a red flag, all wearing red shirts. I moved toward Mr.
Kowal and asked,
“Sir, what about the SS men?”
Mr. Kowal shouted, interrupting the herald, “Exactly! What about the SS men?”
The Rat King answered seriously, “The SS men are bad people.”
I asked, “Will there be another uprising? I’ve already been through one. I don’t
want another uprising.”
“In Poland bad things are happening, but there will not be a second
uprising,”replied the King.
My mother then asked, “Rat King, is there somewhere a Great Order Among
Everything? Is there somewhere Justice?”
The Rat King hesitated, “It is difficult to talk about order in a place filled with
graves and corpses. Every fourth person in this country is dead. We are led by
barbarians.” Now the Rat King pointed at me. He continued, “Maybe he will live to see
the Great Order Among Everything of which you speak.”
I fell into a deep sleep. That was my last dream about the uprising.
The city changed. The burnt half of our apartment building was rebuilt, the air
raid shelter torn down. I grew quickly. I became interested in books and sports. Jacek,
Bulek, and I formed a soccer club, and I got to play the center. Everything was going
great. I hadn’t quite realized then that, more and more, I was seeing portraits of a Great
Leader with a mustache, and that more and more people mumbled the name Stalin.
© by Andrew Olas (andrzej.olas@comcast.net)
Posted with permission.